Jessica

Vozel

Read Jessica's bio and previous columns here

October 6, 2008

I See A Woman, But Where Are Women’s Issues?

The vice-presidential debate is over and the hype has dissipated. Governor Sarah Palin was not the rhetorical disaster it was assumed she would be. Sen. Joe Biden was not the brash “bully” he was expected to be.

After all of the pre-debate speculation that one of the candidates would fail miserably, neither of them did. They both did exactly what they needed to do, in fact. The debate had no lack of commendable performances from the candidates. But conspicuously absent were tough questions followed by tough moderation. And in this election inundated from day one with references to gender and “what women want,” the debate had barely a mention of women’s issues.

About 48 hours before the debate, conservative pundits suddenly realized that Gwen Ifill, the event’s moderator, had written a book titled Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, although the book and its subject matter have been discussed since July. Never mind that the book includes interviews with African American politicians of both political parties, or that it is not a tribute to Barack Obama but a discussion of the political shift after the first African American major-party nominee. Never mind, also, that after a white reporter asked Ifill at the Democratic National Convention if she was “blown away” by Obama’s candidacy, she said, “I still don't know if he'll be a good president. I'm still capable of looking at his pros and cons in a political sense." 

Never mind all of that. Ifill wrote a book with Obama’s name in the title, and that makes her automatically biased. And that bias, conservative pundits charged, would skew the debate in Biden’s favor.  What they couldn’t say was that Ifill was automatically biased because of her skin color, but I bet they wanted to. Instead, they pointed to the book as evidence. 

I can’t say for certain if, after such charges, Ifill was easier on Palin than she would have been otherwise, but she certainly let Palin get away with some things. For example, Palin explicitly said, upon deliberately steering her answer away from the question she was asked, that she was not going answer questions in the way that the moderator or her opponent wanted her to.  Perhaps it was the smile she flashed as she said this that helped her get away with it. But Ifill, and Biden, both seemingly desperate to not come across as attack dogs, didn’t call her on it.

She then continued to steer the discussion in a direction that would allow her to regurgitate talking points and avoid the meandering, insubstantial answers that she gave Katie Couric. If Biden ever countered her, he made sure to direct his criticisms at John McCain, not Palin, and flash huge smiles at Palin when she disparaged him or his running mate. Because his opponent was a woman, he treated her differently. And that’s problematic.

That leads to my next point: For a debate so couched in gender – a female vice-presidential candidate, a female moderator, a “live audience reaction meter” monitoring male and female undecided voters, and weeks of rhetoric about the female vote, female issues, sexism in the campaigns – women’s issues were barely a blip in the discussion.

Biden co-authored the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Palin punished victims of sexual violence by making them pay for their own rape kits (I realize this is becoming a tired example of Palin’s anti-woman policies, but it needs to be repeated ad nauseum for those who consider Palin “a new kind of feminist” and a supporter of women). Palin holds extremist views of abortion – seeking to prohibit it in nearly all situations. None of this was mentioned, aside from a quick line or two from Biden about the VAWA. 

It’s as if the whole idea of gender in this campaign is only fuel for talking points, for pointing accusatory fingers, for discussions of “the new feminism” and women’s roles, for exalting motherhood, for charts and graphs detailing which way the woman vote will sway. When it comes to actually talking about the issues facing women, they don’t factor in.

I’m not arguing that women’s issues are more important than the economy or the war in Iraq.  These are the defining issues of our country right now. But economic downturns disproportionately affect women – particularly single mothers. There is a still a pay gap between the genders. These weren’t mentioned either. In the popular rhetoric, it’s always a nuclear family sitting around a kitchen table, not a single mother. 

Ideally, our nation will come to a time when a separate category for “women’s issues” won’t be necessary. But as long as the gender divide is deepened by endless gender analysis, by polls and articles lumping women together, by sexism and tiptoeing to avoid it, we should at least bring the issues that affect the lives of women to the forefront of our political discussions.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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